Pierre Rochard, CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company, has told US banking regulators that their wide-ranging Basel III capital rewrite leaves unresolved how Bitcoin-related activities should be treated, creating legal uncertainty and potentially changing the amount of capital banks must hold against BTC exposures.
In a formal comment filed March 29 with the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Rochard warned that agencies cannot finalize rules that effectively determine capital treatment for Bitcoin without clearly setting out the framework and evidence behind that treatment. The regulators’ March 19 proposals—designed to overhaul the US bank capital framework—address credit, market and operational risk and counterparty exposures for the largest banks but do not mention Bitcoin, crypto or digital assets, leaving it unclear how existing categories apply to direct BTC holdings, Bitcoin-collateralized lending, custody services and derivatives.
That omission is consequential because the Basel Committee’s crypto asset framework (SCO60) assigns a punitive capital treatment to certain unbacked crypto exposures. Rochard said US authorities must state whether they intend to adopt SCO60 wholesale, apply parts of it selectively, or rely on established domestic capital categories. Without explicit guidance, the economics of custody, lending, derivatives and direct holdings remain unresolved and market participants cannot reliably assess capital costs.
Rochard also cautioned that a final rule that silently imposes—or effectively preserves—a particular capital treatment for Bitcoin activities without explaining the rationale and evidence could be vulnerable to legal challenge. He argued regulators cannot leave the question open and must document the reasoning behind any treatment applied to BTC-related business.
By contrast, regulators have been explicit about other digital-asset arrangements. On March 5 they issued a tokenized securities FAQ stating that eligible tokenized securities should generally receive the same capital treatment as their non-tokenized counterparts and described the capital framework as “technology neutral,” giving clear guidance in that area. No comparable guidance exists for Bitcoin exposures, Rochard noted, forcing banks to interpret how the proposals map to BTC.
Before the re-proposal, some analysts hoped the overhaul might lower capital requirements and unlock liquidity for Bitcoin-related activities. In a post on X, Rochard wrote: “The fiat system should stop sabotaging itself. Bitcoin banking rules would improve bank net interest margins and lower interest rates for borrowers.”
Cointelegraph contacted Rochard for further comment but had not received a response by publication.
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